Mizo phonology
Vowels Monophthongs The Mizo language has eight tones and intonations for each of the vowels a'', ''aw, e'', ''i and u'', four of which are reduced tones and the other four long tones. The vowel ''o has only three tones, all of them of the reduced type; it has almost exactly the same sound as the diphthong /oʊ/ found in American English. However, the vowels can be represented as follows:Weidert, Alfons, Component Analysis of Lushai Phonology, Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science, Series IV – Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, volume 2, Amsterdam: John Benjamins B.V., 1975. Diphthongs Triphthongs Mizo has the following triphthongs: * iai, as in iai, p'''iai' * '''iau' as in r'''iau' ruau, ''t'iau'' tuau etc. * '''uai, as in uai, z'''uai, t'uai, ''v'uai'' * '''uau, as in riau r'''uau, tiau t'uau, ''s'uau''' s'uau' Consonants Mizo has the following consonants, with the first symbol being its orthographical form and the second one its representation in the IPA: # The glottal and glottalized consonants appear only in final position. Tone As Mizo a tonal language, differences in pitch and pitch contour can change the meanings of words. Tone systems have developed independently in many daughter languages, largely by simplifications in the set of possible syllable-final and syllable-initial consonants. Typically, a distinction between voiceless and voiced initial consonants is replaced by a distinction between high and low tone, and falling and rising tones developed from syllable-final ''h and glottal stop, which themselves often reflect earlier consonants. The eight tones and intonations that the vowel a'' (and the vowels ''aw, e'', ''i, u'', and this constitutes all the tones in the Mizo language) can have are shown by the letter sequence '''p'-'a'-'n'-'g', as follows:Zoppen Club, Mizo ṭawng thumal thar * long high tone: páng as in páng''' là'' (which has the same intonation as sáng in the sentence Thingküng '''sáng' tak kan huanah a ding''). * long low tone: pàng as in Tui a kawt '''pàng' pâng mai'' (which has the same intonation as vàng in the word vàng'laini''). * peaking tone: '''pâng as in Tui a kawt pàng '''pâng' mai'' (which has the same intonation as thlûk in I hla phuah '''thlûk' chu a va mawi ve''). * dipping tone: päng as in Tuibur a hmuam '''päng' mai'' (which has the same intonation as säm in Kan huan ka '''säm' vêl mai mai''). * short rising tone: pǎng as in nau'pǎng (which has the same intonation as thǎng in Kan huanah '''thǎng' ka kam''). * short falling tone: pȧng as in I va inkhuih '''pȧng' ve?'' (which has the same intonation as pȧn in I lam ka rawn '''pȧn') * short mid tone: pang as in A dik lo nghâl '''pang' (which has the same tone as man in Sazu ka '''man') * short low tone: pạng as in I '''pạng' a sá a nih kha'' (which has the same tone as chạl in I '''chạl'ah thosí a fù''). Note that the exact orthography of tones with diacritics is still not standardized (notably for differentiating the four short tones with confusive or conflicting choices of diacritics) except for the differenciation of long versus short tones using the circumflex. As well, the need of at least 7 diacritics may cause complications to design easy keyboard layouts, even if they use dead keys, and even if not all basic Latin letters are needed for Mizo itself, so publications may represent the short tones using digrams (e.g. by appending some apostrophe or glottal letter) to reduce the number of diacritics needed to only 4 (those used now for the long tones) on only two dead keys. Sample sentences The following table illustrates the pronunciations of various consonants, vowels and diphthongs found in the Mizo language: :References and further reading for this section.[http://depts.washington.edu/icstll39/abstracts/icstll39_sarmah.pdf Sarmah, Priyankoo & Caroline Wiltshire, An acoustic study of Mizo tones and morpho-tonology. ][http://www.speechprosody2012.org/uploadfiles/file/sp2012_submission_143.pdf Govind, D., Priyankoo Sarmah, S.R. Mahadeva Prasanna, Role of pitch slope and duration in synthesized Mizo tones.]Khoi Lam Thang, ''A phonological reconstruction of Proto-chin.Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, ''Workshop on Tone and Intonation: Theory, Typology and Computation. References External links * Category:Language phonologies